


Past Tense

by GaleIsSomething



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Major Spoilers, Past Relationship(s), Post-Canon, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-29 00:27:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21401137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GaleIsSomething/pseuds/GaleIsSomething
Summary: SPOILERS FOR BL3Krieg saves Ava from a bandit town he was planning to clean out. He would know her tattoos anywhere.
Relationships: Krieg/Maya (Borderlands)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 86





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i've been yearning for a fic like this since the end of bl3, so here i fucking go

Krieg stashes his bike outside of the bandit town that popped up a mile from where he was living. Bandit towns were showing up more recently, threads of COV scrambling together half-assed attempts to remake the family. Krieg wasn’t asked to clean them up but he’s definitely going to do it. It’s their own fault if they set up close to him. He wasn’t about to cross the continent, but a few minutes’ drive? Yeah, he’d go and clean the place out. He’s surprised bandits were still setting up nearby.

There aren’t any look outs on the east wall. Krieg walks right up to it and pulls himself over. He lands behind some sheet-metal buildings. He pulls his buzz-axe out and holds it ready. He stalks through the space between the houses. 

A few shots of gunfire, followed by cackling. Krieg twitches. He strolls around the corner into the small street. A group of bandits are shooting cans a while down the street. There’s a psycho cheering them on. Their backs are towards Krieg. 

Krieg rushes forward and reels back. He throws his axe. It buzzes through the skull of the closest bandit.

“We have to squeeze the whimpers out of you!” Krieg cackles. He’s yanking his axe out of the bandit’s head as the others pull weapons. 

Krieg lets his vision and actions blur under the bloodlust. The five bandits are dead all too quick for Krieg’s taste. The little man tells him that it’s a good thing. More time for clearing the town out, he claims. More dead bodies, right? Krieg grumbles and shakes his head. He rolls his shoulders back and shakes his arms frantically.

There’s another set of gunshots, a pause in which Krieg goes still, and then shouting. More gunshots. A proper gun fight. Krieg shifts his grip on his axe. He runs towards the noise. He deals quickly with the few that he runs into on the way there. It’s a moderately sized town, and this fight is going on near the entrance on the south side of the place. Krieg ducks between another set of buildings. He has to hop another wall and then he’s in the fight. 

A psycho runs by him, screaming about joining his brothers. Krieg grabs him by the neck and slams him into the wall. His head almost shatters. Krieg goes the way that the psycho was going. He gets a few others on the way there, as he’s rushing towards the real commotion. 

Krieg hears her before he sees her. He knows the sound of space shifting around the energy of a siren, stepping aside for her to do what she does. Krieg’s heart is in his throat as both he and the little man throw themselves into another small group, close to the noise. They’re mostly injured already, so he simply gives the final blows. Krieg scrambles across the ground and sees the purple orb of siren energy, lighter tendrils swirling around it. The bandit inside shouts and strains.

The bandits are screaming, as they should be, and some are fleeing. Others try to shoot past their captured friend at the… kid.

It’s not her. It’s a kid in a hoodie, a decent pistol in her hands that fumble the reload. She’s pressed to a wall, only half behind over. Her shield takes more than a few bullets for her. She flinches every time. The little man urges him forward. Save the kid. She’s in over her head. Then Krieg sees the tattoos curling around her left arm.

Krieg takes a grenade from his belt. He pulls the pin and throws it at the bandits shooting at the kid. He jumps at the phaselock bubble. He brings the axe down hard, cracking through the spine and the bubble pops. The bandit hits the ground uselessly, screaming. The grenade goes off. Krieg laughs as one of the tinks goes skyward. One of the bandits that dodged it lands in his sight lines. They hops to their feet and fires an SMG at Krieg wildly. Most of it lands in his shield.

Krieg laughs louder. He marches towards them as they try to retreat and reload. 

“Nothing makes me stronger than a sucking chest wound!” Krieg hollers. He lands the axe in the side of their neck and they go limp. Krieg has to push on the body, too, to get his axe free again. 

The other stragglers from the surprise grenade stumble toward him, firing half heartedly and hollering for help. Krieg punches one of them and they hit the ground. Another bleeds out. The last one gets a few gunshots to the shoulder. They pass out, at least. 

Krieg turns back to the kid. She’s staring at him, pistol pointed at him. Her hands are pretty steady for how she messed up reloading. Her eyes are narrowed suspiciously. There’s still some fear in her face. Krieg looks at her tattoos instead. He follows the patterns down from her shoulder carefully. He thought they looked familiar, as the bubbles had.

_ They’re hers _ , the little man repeats.  _ They’re hers! They’re... _

“Maya’s,” Krieg says, the thought slipping out with the intensity.

The kid’s mouth falls open. She seems like she’s about to drop her pistol. 

There’s a shout from behind Krieg. He whips around. A grenade arcs towards them. Krieg swings his axe like a baseball bat. He hits the grenade with the flat side of the saw and it flies back to the thrower. There’s a cut off scream as it goes off. 

Krieg holds his free hand up against the light of the explosion, giggling to himself. He doesn’t get to do that often, and not be caught in the blast himself. He turns back to the kid. She ducks her head at the explosion, hiding behind her hands. She’s peers up at him between her hands. 

“You--You knew Maya?” the kid asks, breathless. “Wh-Wh--”

_ Knew? _

Krieg doesn’t linger on it yet. There’s another explosion and flurry of gunshots before the kid finishes her sentence. Krieg twitches his head to the side. Someone has a rocket launcher. More than one person does. Krieg wouldn’t have trouble with them on his own. This kid would be dead in minutes though. They’re going to break into the little space Krieg cleared out any second now.

_ We can’t put her at risk. We need to get out of here. _

“Die, little man,” Krieg hisses. The kid flinches at another loud bang and starts to shake again. Krieg bites down a scream so he doesn’t scare her any more. He holds his free hand out. The kid quickly looks at him again. She looks at his hand, then back to his face. He grabs her right arm. He lets the little man through before he takes off. “Follow us.”

Krieg pulls the kid with him, back the way he came. He feels her try to resist before running with him. Krieg gives her a boost over the wall before heaving himself over it again. He lands on his feet and pulls another grenade from his belt. He throws the pin to the side, chucking the grenade over the wall as the reinforcements fill the space they just left. 

The kid follows him without prompting, pistol stashed in her hoodie. Krieg checks over his shoulder constantly, but she doesn’t try to go another way. There are a few bandits back on the streets Krieg already cleared, looting their friends’ corpses and trying to find the violence. Krieg lays into the three that were too close. One down the street turns a gun on them. The kid grunts and the bandit lifts into a purple bubble. Krieg almost trips over his own feet. He looks back at the kid who pulls her pistol and fires at the bandit. Her aim isn’t good while running, but her face is determined. The bubble pops when the man is dead and the kid grins.

Krieg leads her through the buildings again and she takes the initiative to start climbing the outer fence on her own. Krieg still helps her over and follows suit. One of those rocket launchers goes off and Krieg hears the screams of those caught in it. He got the kid out of there, he just had to be sure she learned her lesson. Then he can go and have a bloodbath all to himself. 

The kid looks around. It’s more colorful than the pandoran deserts, but not by much. The train goes by in the distance. Krieg cracks his neck and puts his buzz-axe on his back. He hops off the rocks leaning against the wall. Krieg stalks off towards where he hid his bike. 

_ We have to ask her about Maya _ .

“Hey! Hold up!” the kid calls after him. Krieg flinches, more at the little man, then looks over his shoulder. The kid slides down the rocks and jogs after him. “H-How did you know Maya?”

_ Knew. Again. What happened? Ask her what happened. _

Krieg shoves it down, grumbling. He punches himself in the side of the head. The kid falters. Krieg takes careful breaths and returns his fists to his sides. He rounds the corner to the small cave he put his bike in. He slings his leg over the seat, rolling his shoulders and neck slowly. The kid rounds the corner a second later. She doesn’t hide the surprise on her face when she sees the bike. 

Krieg stares at her. When she’s done looking at the vehicle, she stares right back. Her hair is blue. It’s darker than Maya’s. She’s not actually wearing a hoodie, Krieg notes, but whatever it is has a hood. A pair of headphones hang around her neck. She has a belt of sorts across her torso, with a portion that says “NOPE” in red lettering. There’s a scratch on her cheek, the blood dried already.

The little man’s raving goes ignored. Krieg pats the seat space behind him. The kid jolts a bit before stumbling forward. She carefully climbs on behind him. Her hands grip the back of his jacket tight. When Krieg knocks back the kick stand, her grip gets even tighter. He starts the engine and peels out of the cave, going as fast as he can.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> angst fest incoming, but hopefully with a bittersweet feel, not just bitter.

Outside Tina’s old workshop, the bandit outcropping has been abandoned for weeks now. When Krieg moved in, they learned to steer clear of him at all costs. The town was in more disrepair than when it was inhabited. That says a lot. Tina’s old graffitti is still around, bunny faces high on the cave walls. Krieg doesn’t mind enough to go clean them off. 

Krieg only has a few personal things he drags around with him. Pictures that Gaige took and had printed, a shoebox of Maya’s things she left with him, various buzz-axe blades he’s painted on, a duffel bag of clothes in case his jacket and pants get dirty, and an Echo recorder. The pictures are taped to the wall, done with Tina’s insistence that it’s what your supposed to do with pictures of friends. The shoebox and duffel bag are tucked under the bed that’s too small for him to use comfortably. The buzz axe blades and Echo sit on the old work table. 

Krieg parks his motorcycle against the cave wall opposite the garage. The kid climbs off carefully and looks up at the bunny faces on the walls.

“Is this Tina’s old place?” the kid asks. She looks to Krieg. He nods, short and abrupt. “She’s back on Pandora, you know? Kinda close to Roland’s Rest.”

Krieg hadn’t known, but given everything that happened, he doesn’t blame Tina for not coming by. He stays on his bike for a few more moments. The little man is banging pots and pans for him to get to the point with the kid. Krieg smacks the side of his head to shut him up for a few minutes again.

“I’m uh…. My name is Ava,” the kid says. Krieg puts down the kickstand and climbs off his seat. He jams his hands in his jacket pockets. “What’s yours? do--Do you have one?” Krieg giggles. “Yeah okay, that was a stupid question, whatever. So what’s your name?”

“Krieg.” The name comes out harsh and strained.

A look of recognition crosses Ava’s face. She smiles a bit.

“Maya mentioned you a few times,” Ava says. Butterflies spawn in Krieg’s stomach and he clears his throat. His throat tightened and he bites down some joyous screaming. “She had pictures in her room. It’s… It’s nice to meet you. You were a Vault Hunter, too, right?”

Krieg nods. He walks across the cave to the garage. Ava hurries after him. 

“That’s so cool!” Ava gushes. “I’m training to be a Vault Hunter, too. That’s why I was at the camp. Zane’s been training me to shoot and stuff. He’s kinda bad at it, but points for trying, I guess. He told me to just pick off a few guys, but I uh… I got further in than I planned.”

Krieg gets it, but when it happens to him, he’s usually thrilled. The little man never is but he doesn’t care. He pulls the garage door up with one hand, hitting a button to lock it in place. Ava follows him into the room, looking around eagerly. 

_ You’re both getting distracted _ .

Krieg slaps his hands to both sides of his head, grumbling. Ava watches him carefully. Krieg doesn’t blame her. He sits on the bed, hunched over and leaning on his knees. Ava awkwardly looks around, at the buzz axe blades, at the Tina graffitti, then finally at the pictures. She looks them over carefully. 

“Maya mentioned you guys sometimes,” Ava says. It’s quiet, almost reverent. Krieg looks over his shoulder at the pictures. Ava points to one of the pictures. The one of the six of them in the back of a bandit technical in the Dust with the Ellie statues, Axton and Salvador mock-praying to them.“When I got her to talk about her VH days. I’ve only met Zero and… you, I guess.” Ava looks at all the pictures with awe all over her face. “Gaige sounds super cool, if she cool? I bet she is.”

Ava sits on the bed next to Krieg. A tension settles in the air. Krieg bounces one of his legs, nerves bubbling up as the little man goes quiet. Ava doesn’t seem to notice, still admiring the pictures. She gives a chuckle at the one that has Krieg with a whole chicken on his head, Maya looking bemused a bit behind him. Krieg likes that picture. Maya wasn’t the focus of any of the pictures, she didn’t want to be. Gaige was sure to have her in them, though.

The little man shoves himself to the forefront and Krieg lets him. He doesn’t want to scare Ava with his blabbering. Even if it feels like salting an open wound, and not in the fun way. 

“What happened,” Krieg hears himself say. Ava jolts.

“Y-You don’t--” Ava starts. 

Krieg drags a hand down his face, a groan muffled deep in his throat. Ava stops. It feels like skin being ripped from the bone, long and tortuous. Krieg’s eye stings. He could take a guess of what happened. They didn’t need to ask her, he tells the little man, he didn’t fucking need to know.

“She died,” Ava says. Krieg goes stock still and silent. Ava wrings her fingers then crosses her arms. “Fighting Troy Calypso. In… In the vault on Promethea. Bastard killed her.” Krieg bristles and takes a shaky breath in. “I-I’m sorry no one told you. It was… It was months ago.”

Krieg can almost hear her. He could hear her voice if he could move. He still has the echo logs she kept. Mostly menial things, but it was her voice nonetheless.

" _ Don't worry, big guy. I'll be back. I promise. _ ”

“The Calypsos are dead now, though,” Ava continues. “Both of them. The Vault Hunters kicked their asses. You… probably know that, though. Since the uh-- since the cult dissolved.”

Krieg feels like his suffocating, some imaginary hands grasped tight around his neck and squeezing and squeezing. Strangled, the word leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. His eyes sting and his chest feels too small. His lungs ache for air. He takes in as many breaths as he can but they aren’t working. 

Ava has gone quiet next to him, politely looking away, tears slipping down her face, too.

Krieg’s mask hides whatever ugly expression he has. It doesn’t hide that his good eye is dripping with tears. He curls over on himself, unable to stop the sob that escapes him. Tears blur his vision and fall out the eye hole of the mask. He heaves and makes aborted noises as the little man does the same, echoing in his head. She can’t be gone, he thinks with no conviction. She promised she was going to be back. She hadn’t even taken the break she mentioned after the Warrior was dead. 

He doesn’t know how long he cries there, curled up on himself. It’s pathetic, he thinks. He’s a mountain of a psycho and has enough of a hold on his faculties to have some awareness. He’s a Vault Hunter. Vault Hunters are tougher than crying over one death. The thought only makes him curl in on himself tighter. His head throbs against his skull and he smacks himself uselessly. There’s no strength behind it. 

When Krieg blinks his eye open again and looks up, Ava’s sitting outside on the edge of the stone foundation, a few feet away from the entrance to the garage. She’s doing something with the Echo in her hands. Probably calling the Raiders. Krieg hasn’t been in touch with them since Tina set him up, before she left for Eden-6. 

Krieg leans against the wall that the bed is pressed against and looks up at the ceiling. He catches his breath. He lifts his mask to rub at his eye and wipe the wetness off his face. He puts it back in place with a muffled sigh. He can’t remember the last time he cried, some time before he broke out from the Exploitation Reserve. Now that he isn’t choking on it, it seems therapeutic. Any of that is made bitter by the cause. 

Maya… the pretty lady. 

_ Torn apart was putting it lightly _ . The little man laughs hollowly. They probably couldn’t speak aloud without their voice breaking.

Krieg stands from the bed and Ava looks over her shoulder. She slides her headphones off. Her smile is sad but understanding. Her eyes are a little red as well. Krieg leans over to reach under the bed frame. He pulls out the shoe box. 

Ava watches him curiously as he walks over. Krieg plops down next to her, facing his body towards her. Her Echo has some game open. She sets it aside. Krieg takes a few more breaths before putting the box between them. He takes off the cover carefully and places it under the box. Ava’s face lights up again as she looks in the box. 

Pictures that Gaige managed to get where Maya was the focus. A few of when she was trying new hairstyles during their down time, including when she got one Gaige lovingly dubbed the “emo” cut. Somewhere it’s blurry of Maya in the odd reading positions she often ended up in. One where she was almost upside down in one of the booths of Moxxi’s bar was Krieg’s favorite. There were only two where Maya was properly posing. One was taken to appease Gaige, her smile is indulgent and the lighting of Moxxi’s bar paints odd patterns in her hair. The second was one Krieg took. His hands were usually too shaky. 

Krieg can remember it like he’s there. His hands twitch like he’s holding the camera. He sifts through the others to find it. Maya and Krieg were sitting on the couch in front of the safe in the Raiders HQ, waiting for Mordecai to show up. Kreig had picked up the camera curiously. Maya asked him to take some glamour shots of her for shits and giggles. There were a few where Maya looked like she was from a fashion magazine, too good for the photographer and every viewer lucky enough to see her. The one Krieg had printed secretly and kept, though, was one of the last ones. Her stoicism cracked when Krieg had said something along the lines of “get it girl.” She had snorted and broken down into laughter. Krieg snapped a few more pictures before she got him to stop.

Ava leans forward to see that photo as Krieg reminisces. He turns it slightly to show her. Ava laughs and it reminds him of Maya in the warmth. He gently hands the pictures over to Ava and she takes them reverentially. She looks through them with beyond careful hands. 

Krieg picks through the box again. Three books that Maya had left behind. One that she had been reading to him before she went to Athenas. That one still has the page dog-eared ever so slightly since they didn’t have bookmarks. It was about a child developing powers and learning to control them and balance life, learning their place in the world. Maya said it was one of her favorites, she had two copies. 

Another is one on meditation and focusing the mind so one could be open to the world. 

The last one is a story book. Krieg had never read the actual thing, but he’d read the back. A shipwreck saved by a wizard and the groups that were separated on some island.

There’s a journal she prompted him into keeping, abandoned a week after she left. It’s soft and leather bound with an elastic loop for the pencil she got for him, too. The pencil sits in that little loop, hastily sharpened with his buzz-axe blade the last time he used it. 

Lastly, there’s a Maliwan fire pistol. Krieg gave up guns once they hit Sanctuary, more comfortable with grenades and his axe. Once they were settled, Maya gave him the pistol with a stern order to keep it. She warned him some day he’s going to be out of options and needed a gun. Krieg had laughed it off, mostly, but took it anyway. He didn’t like when she was worried, it put creases in her forehead. He kept it with him until they were on their well deserved break. That’s when it ended up in the shoebox. 

“You two were really close,” Ava says. Her smile is sad and she’s crying again. She laughs half-heartedly, wiping her tears away. “She didn’t talk a lot about you guys. It’s just… It’s…” she lets out a small whimper. She breathes carefully before looking back up at Krieg. “It’s nice to know someone misses her as much as I do. Ev-Everyone else was so--so cagey about it and I just… I… I don’t know. They miss her, duh, but it’s just---”

“Not the same,” Krieg finishes. 

Ava nods, face scrunched up as she holds in tears looking at the pictures. Krieg nudges the box toward her. He learned what it was to not feel the same about Maya the day they met Lilith. Axton flirted, but he flirted with all of them. Gaige looked up to her because to her she was the most badass person on the planet. Krieg agreed, but it was different for him. 

When they met at the train station, the little man had cried for him to let her fix him. But when Maya gave him a pat on the back and a compliment on kicking bandit ass in Liar’s Berg, the little man changed his tune. Krieg had to be better for her, be as sane as a Pandoran could be, be someone she’d want on her side in a fight, someone she’d want to spend time with outside of fights. Krieg thought he was close. In the logs he left behind at his first cave home, he was able to let the little man out in snippets. Now they’re both at the wheel, even if only in conversation.

_ We’ve come a long way. She won’t see it _ .

Shut up. Shut up.

_ Hey, let me finish.  _

…

_ She’s not… she’s not gonna see it, but she’d be proud. She’d be so fucking proud of us.  _

She would be. Krieg smiles under his mask and he thinks he’s crying again. 

Ava lets out an aborted laugh when she gets to the books in the box. Tears are falling free now. She looks so relieved to let it happen. She picks up the meditation book. She turns it over in her hands then opens it. The spine cracks from lack of use. It wasn’t one she looked at often. 

“She was trying to teach me to be a Siren,” Ava says. “I wasn’t one before she… But she knew somehow. She said she just knew that I was going to be a Siren some day. She wanted me to--to be ready.” Her voice cracks. She uses her sleeve to wipe her eyes and sniffles roughly. “So she taught me to meditate and everything. I thought it sucked being stuck in the library, especially when Maliwan showed up. She always… always kept me safe. It was kinda annoying.”

Krieg chuckles and nods. She had a protective streak. Ava laughs with him. She places the meditation book down and picks up the partially unread story book.

“I get it though,” Ava continues. She turns the book over to read the back. “I do. I just… I wish I could have done more. To help or kill COV, but I--” She trails off slightly. She grips the book tight and sniffles again. Her finger traces over the indent of the dog-eared page. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t do a damn thing. A-And she… she frickin’.” Ava sobs and hunches over, holding the book to her chest. 

_ Comfort her. _

“Let us not burthen our remembrance with… A heaviness that's gone,” Krieg says, resisting the urge to scream it. He’s not sure where the words come from. The little man pulls it from somewhere deep inside them.

Ava looks up at him in surprise. She stares at him with a look of awe as tears slide down her cheeks. Krieg doesn’t have any tissues or cloths to offer her and he feels pretty shitty about it. Ava doesn’t care. She wipes her face again, smiling like she was soaking in the sun after being underground for months. She nods frantically and laughs. When she’s not crying anymore, she stares at Kreig yet again. Krieg can read the relief on her face. Her smile is warm and thankful. The feeling worms itself into Krieg’s chest and stomach. He feels warm, too. 

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Ava says. “You’re right.” She trails off briefly. She places the book in the box again and carefully closes it. She puts it off to the side near her Echo. She moves closer to Krieg and he doesn’t stiffen. She holds her arms up and goes in for the hug hesitantly. Krieg welcomes it. 

Krieg hold his arms open and Ava falls into them, crying anew. Krieg thinks he is, too. Ava wraps her arms around his neck, stretched over his broad shoulders. Krieg keeps his hold light. She’s so small in his arms. 

_ She’s so young. _

Krieg grumbles an agreement and hugs as tight as he dares. Ava sobs into his shoulder. Krieg puts his chin on top of her head. He gently rubs her back. Her shoulders shake as she tries to calm herself. 

“Our revels now are ended. These our actors… were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air,” Krieg says. The little man guides him through the words that seem familiar, like he’s spoken them forever before. Ava quiets herself as she listens. “And, like the baseless fabric of this vision… all which it inherit, shall dissolve. Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.” 

Ava takes a second to think before she’s nodding into his shoulder. She moves closer, practically into his lap, and Krieg lets her. She leans into him, curled up on his thighs like the child she is. Krieg willingly holds her close as she shakes from pent up emotion.

“I miss her so much,” Ava whispers. 

Krieg squeezes her gently. “Us, too,” he says, his voice far rougher than he wants.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i want to do a few more chapters, unsure of what, but we'll see
> 
> this was written under the idea that Ava bottled everything up because she was the only one reacting so violently. she tries really hard to be grown up, and i have no doubt that after the game ended, she definitely pushes herself in that way.


End file.
